Traces of the thousand and one nights in Borges

Abstract

Borges has declared the Arabian Nights not an exotic other but a constitutive component of our culture, part of our memory. He has written with recognized erudition on many of the translations of the Nights, evaluating their rendering of what has come to be known as the original text. In this article I seek to trace the presence of the Nights in some of Borges's best known fiction. I look at the many ways Borges has played with the open‐endedness of the Nights and examine the roles of allusion to this work in his writings, arguing against an overarching interpretation. A particular focus of Borges's interest in the Nights is the magic Night 602, central and specular to the whole. I examine Borges's appraisal of this Night, and offer a perhaps playful reading of ‘Emma Zunz’ as a modern‐day variation.